LH TORANA SL/R

Iget into a lot of ar­gu­ments over the pro­duc­tion date of this car. It’s 1973, well be­fore the show­room models and is a pre-pro­duc­tion car. I bought it in 1975 from Holden – it was the first time it had been sold to the pub­lic. It was like new and it’s still orig­i­nal, with the body work, paint and in­te­rior that came out of the fac­tor y. I be­lieve they made 10 as test cars. Three were SLRs – this was third one and the other two were de­stroyed in test­ing at Lang Lang. This one is the survivor.

I’ve hung on to it all this time – 40 years last Christ­mas, I’ve had it. It’s a beau­ti­ful car to drive. It’s got a close-ra­tio XU-1 gearbox in it – sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal. The en­gine is quite mod­i­fied, with a coun­ter­weighted crank­shaft, dif­fer­ent pis­tons, XU-1 car­bu­ret­tors, limited slip diff. It’s quite good.

If you put a coun­ter­weighted crank in those 202s – my son’s car has one too – they’re a very smooth en­gine and I think th­ese cars han­dle bet­ter with a six in the front.

My son learned to drive in that car and has a bit of an at­tach­ment to it, and now of course they’re highly col­lectible, so they’ve gone full cir­cle.